


One has the flu. The other needs some comfort.

by Rileyspork



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: ADHD Newton Geiszler, Gen, Gender Issues, Hurt/Comfort, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Newton Geiszler, Other, Sickfic, Trans Character, Trans Hermann Gottlieb, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-05 11:23:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1816810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rileyspork/pseuds/Rileyspork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newton is sick and is a good friend when finds out Hermann is trans. Hermann catches it and returns the favor for Newton's own insecurities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hermann

**Author's Note:**

> Mentions of hate speech. Swearing (in German).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Hermann is grudgingly taking care of a sick Newton, Newton notices Hermann is trans. Trans!Hermann, Nonbinary!Newton.

This is the second time Hermann has entered the lab to find his partner insensate. This time, though, it takes him about fifteen minutes to realize he isn't alone in the room. He doesn't see Newton when he enters--not among the heaping piles of kaiju organs littering the floor.

He hears a soft, wet noise, and immediately thinks there is something alive on Newton’s side. He goes apprehensively to investigate, and is technically proved right when he finds his lab mate laid out on the floor. The smaller doctor’s eyes are closed, his nose red, and his breathing wheezy.

Hermann crouches awkwardly, forcing disobedient limbs to temporarily obey, in an effort to avoid falling flat on his face. He reaches to take Newtons pulse. Newton moans, quietly, turning his head toward the contact.

"Newton. What did you do?" Hermann accuses softly.

Newton opens his eyes, and peers groggily upwards.

“Huh?” his voice is nasal and raspy.

“What did you do?”

Newton raises his head a little, looks around, “uh… I guess I passed out…”

Hermann’s voice is not kind when he orders, “look at me.”

Newton does, and Hermann studies his eyes. They are bloodshot, but there is no sign of real hemorrhaging. His nose is red, but not bloody.

“Newton, were you exposed to anything? Some Kaiju disease?”

Newton shakes his head, laying back and closing his eyes like he’s going back to sleep right there. Then he mumbles something.

Hermann leans close to his pale-faced colleague, “what?”

“Cousin with the flu. I was helping…”

Hermann sits back on his ankles, and glares down. Newton remains blissfully unaware, as he has fallen back to sleep.

Hermann sighs, gets up, and goes to find a blanket and a thermometer. He holds Newton’s head, as the younger man groggily fights the instrument under his tongue, then checks the reading.

“102.6.”

“Nuh-uh. ‘m cold…” Newton almost whines, turning over onto his side, and making a mighty wet sniffing sound.

Hermann gets tissues and a blanket, and his tablet. He isn’t certain Newton has the flu. It’s entirely possible, but it isn’t by far the only thing he could have contracted. Not when his side of the room looks like the “what not to do” photos in a lab safety manual.

So he settles a hazmat mask over his face, settles himself  on the floor, and settles the blanket over his partner. Newton grips it, and curls up.

Two hours later, Hermann’s rear hurts, and he’s readjusting himself, about to get up to find a pillow to sit on, when Newton moans.

“Newton?”

Newton opens his eyes, reaches out, drags himself between Hermann’s legs, his head on Hermann’s hip. Hermann stares down at him, offended.

Newton fists a hand in Hermann’s trouser leg. The miserable tension that has stayed with him even as he slept dissipates. He sighs nasally, and closes his eyes.

Hermann elects not to get up, for health reasons. Newton needs good quality rest, after all.

 

“Sheibenkleister!” Hermann almost throws his tablet across the room, he’s so frustrated.

Newton jerks, at Hermann’s exclamation. Hermann looks down at him. He had honestly forgotten what the warm weight on his leg was.

Newton turns his head, frowns upwards. Then he relaxes again, “oh. Hermann.”

“Yes. Who else would it be?”

Newton shakes his head sleepily, resettling on Hermann, “I don’t know. I was confused.”

“What’s so confusing about who you’re lying on?”

Newton blows his nose as though he’s endeavoring to imitate a foghorn, “I thought it was you but I also thought you had a penis.”

Hermann feels his face pale, then redden, until his skin is burning. Newton’s shoulder is in his crotch. He hadn’t thought...Hermann stammers, shuts his mouth, and opens it again, “scheisse.”

“What?”

“Sheisse.”

“What does that mean?”

“You...you won’t tell anyone, will you?”

Newton turns, his head now resting on Hermann’s lower stomach, “It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would come up in conversation, dude.”

“Promise me you won’t…”

Newton looks up at him, expression oddly blank.

“Newton?”

“I’m going to be sick.”

And he is, thankfully after rolling away from Hermann. By the time he’s finished bringing up all the mucus he’s swallowed, Newton has clearly forgotten about Hermann’s anatomy. He is also crying and goopy with the former contents of his own stomach.

Hermann gets up, unhooks his cane from where it hung on a table. He offers an arm down to Newton. Newton doesn’t respond. Hermann pokes him with his cane. Newton looks up, lower lip atremble.

“Get up.”

Newton does, shakily. He sways and Hermann catches his arm. Newton leans, taking full advantage of Hermann’s grip. Hermann tries not to fall over. His balance isn’t bad today, and Newton is small, but it would still be less than ideal to end up in a heap of scientists on the floor. Especially on Newton’s side of the room.

 

Hermann deposits his lab partner on the floor of one of the showers, after a less than dignified trip down a hall and up an elevator. He turns the water on warm, and closes the door.

“Say something if you start to drown.”

He hears muffled laughter, and decides that’s good enough.

Half an hour later, though, he’s calling Newton’s name, and not getting a response. Giving up, he opens the door. Newton is slumped in a corner, eyes closed. Snot runs from his nose.

Hermann stares at him, “Newton.”

Newton doesn’t stir.

Hermann yells his name.

Newton doesn’t stir.

Hermann strips off his shirt and trousers, turns off the shower, and reaches, trembling, for his lab partner.  

Newton opens his eyes groggily, as Hermann shakes him.

“What?”

“You.. you idiot.”

Newton scowls, and closes his eyes.

Hermann sits on the floor. It’s really too much. He’s shirtless, as naked as he’s ever consented to be in front of anyone as an adult, and Newton was fine..

Newton opens his eyes again, tilts his head.

“Hermann.”

Hermann turns to look at him, snaps, “what?”

“I wouldn’t tell anyone if you didn’t want me to. But why do you care?”

Hermann sighs, and leans against the wall of the shower. It’s warm, and damp, and the smooth tiles feel good against the stiff muscles in his back, where his binder is a little too tight.

“Because sometimes people aren’t very nice about it.”

Newton sits up, “who?”

Hermann looks at him. Newton’s face is dark, his mouth turned down in an angry frown. He might actually look imposing if he didn’t have snot on his upper lip.

“Um…”

“Seriously, who, Hermann?”

Hermann doesn’t answer him. He has no interest in certain people finding Kaiju organs in their beds, or whatever Newton would deem appropriate retribution. What he does have interest in, and can’t really describe all the feelings he is given by, is the look on Newton’s face at the mention of someone giving Hermann a hard time.

Newton sneezes. Snot goes all down his front. Hermann sighs, and turns the water back on. He doesn’t leave the shower. Just sits on the floor, and watches Newton clean himself up.

“I know people have bothered you when you wore a skirt.”

Newton looks at him through the spray, “but that’s me.”

This seems to be such an obvious, base distinction, that he talks slowly as he explains it to Hermann, “it doesn’t matter if people think _I’m_ weird. I’ll always be weird. There’s so many more things people could tease me for that if all they come up with is that I’m wearing a dress, they’re just being uncreative.”

“But it’s so different if it’s me?”

“Duh, dude,” is all the explanation Newton gives him, before apparently falling back asleep.

Hermann reaches out, pulls back, reaches again. He presses his hand to Newton’s cheek, then quickly withdraws it, leaves the shower, and goes to find towels.


	2. Newton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Hermann catches Newton's flu, and the deadline for closing down their lab gets near, Newton is having some problems of his own. SevereADHD!Newton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very brief mention of violence. POV with low self esteem.

  
  


“Dude! You look awful.”

Newton steers his lab partner to a rolling chair in the center of the large room. Hermann is super unsteady on his feet. Newton wraps an arm around the taller back. They make it to the seat, and Hermann falls into it, wheezing and pale.

“I think you might have caught what I had.”

Hermann gives him the stinkiest of eyes--though actually not, because kaiju eyes actually smelled pretty bad. Newton digs out a temperature probe from his side of the lab, and thrusts it to the older man.

Hermann recoiles so voilently it sends the chair rolling away a few inches, “I’m already ill.”

Newton looks down at the probe. It covered by an unidentifiable sludge, and mold on top of that. He wipes it on his pants.

Hermann does not find this an acceptable method of sterilization, and refuses to take it orally. Newton realizes it’s probably a mark of how bad Hermann is feeling, that the taller man consents to having his axillary temperature taken with the still-slimy probe.

After some brief calculations, initially incorrect because he got his celsius and fahrenheit mixed up, Newton figures Hermann’s temperature to be 102, even.

Hermann coughs, quietly, as Newton fetches him water from the vending machine in the hall. After Hermann drinks it, he scoots himself back to his work station on the rolling chair, and Newton goes back to work.

 

It is maybe an hour later, when he hears a thud from across the room. He scrambles to his feet and trips over a kaiju intestine. Hermann is sitting up, when Newton reaches him, hand to his elbow.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m...very dizzy,” Hermann admits, slowly.

“I’ll call medical…”’

Hermann shakes his head, which doesn’t appear to help with the dizziness.

“Do not. I dislike being prodded.”

Newton sighs, places his hand on Hermann’s arm. Hermann draws away, and pulls himself to his feet on a desk edge. He doesn’t do anything after getting there, though, except look like he’s going to fall back down.

“Hermann?”

Hermann coughs shallowly into his sleeve, “go back to work, Dr. Geiszler.”

Newton frowns, but does as he is told. He does not stop looking over his shoulder at the older doctor, and almost spills kaiju blue on himself for his trouble.

  
  


It is maybe four hours later, when Newton hears Hermann call his name, softly. His first name.

He looks up, and over at the other side of the lab. Hermann is seated on the floor, legs folded to his right side, leaning forward. His palms are pressed to the tile, his elbows locked, head hanging.

Newton crouches at his side, and checks his pulse, and temperature. Both are more abnormal than they had been earlier in the day. He wheezes audibly with each breath--each more shallow than the last.

Newton sits cross-legged and puts his hand under Hermann’s upper chest. Newton rubs back and forth, from collarbone to collarbone, trying to make Hermann more comfortable. Hermann only tries to push him away twice, which scares Newton.

His pinky brushes the top of Hermann’s binder. Newton frowns, “Hermann”

Hermann raises his head enough to look at Newton. His face is sweaty and his eyes run with tears as he fights for breath. Newton hooks his finger under the top of the binder through Hermann’s shirt, “does this restrict your breathing?”

Hermann nods, reaches up, pulls at it. Newton thinks that means Hermann wants it off, so he flips up the other man’s shirt and undoes the hooks under Hermann’s armpit.

When it releases, Hermann’s breath comes in a rush. Hermann starts to cough without stopping, collapsing onto the floor. Newton, hands all over his colleague's chest, side, and back, tries to comfort. Hermann tries to slap him away, which brings Newton immense relief.

Under Newton’s hands are red, bruised lines where the binder had dug in. Hermann sits up a little and spits mucus onto the floor. His breathing is finally easing, just a little. Newton finds something to put under his head, a spare shirt. Hermann rests there, finally, mercifully, breathing.

Newton sits back on his heels, fists his hands the folds of his skirt, “Hermann?”

Hermann turns his head, blinking up at him.

“Are you...are you sure I shouldn’t call medical?”

Hermann closes his eyes,  “call.”

Newton scrambles to his feet and pretty much dives for the phone.

  
  


Twelve minutes later, a nurse is helping Hermann onto a stretcher, and Newton is hurriedly gathering up books and both of their current notes. Newton jogs to catch up with the nurse and the gurney, as they cross the shatterdome through through one of the deeper underground passages.

A group of soldiers came through going the other way. Newton realizes too late what Hermann is already trying to cover--the two gentle curves under his button-down. One of the laughing group stops, and stares. Newton shoves between him and the stretcher, “do you want to be contaminated? This man has been exposed to a kaiju virus--”

“Man?” chokes the soldier, looking back at his buddies to share the laugh. Then he looks Newton up and down, raising his eyebrows at the skirt.

Newton feels his face get hot. Shortly thereafter, he feels his nose break.

Sitting on the hallway floor, eyes tearing up from the pain, he glares after the retreating, laughing group.

“Newton.”

Newton looks up at Hermann’s blurry face--Newton didn’t even know where his glasses were.

“Right. Medical. Right.”

He gets up, piles the things he had dropped when punched the soldier, lifts them in his arms. He walks beside the stretcher, not looking at his partner.

He lifts his wrist to his nose, catching the blood dribbling down his face.

Hermann is staring at him, and his face is still hot.

  
  
  


Newton sits on a molded plastic chair, holding a basin under his face. His nose won’t stop bleeding, and it was getting on his notes.

Every few seconds, he looks up from his work to check on his sleeping partner. Hermann’s monitor is not showing cheerful numbers, though they are better than when they arrived to the medical bay.

“Nhhn...Newton?”

Newton stands abruptly, spilling pens and highlighters from his lap, “Hermann.”

Hermann blinks at him sleepily, “why are you still here?”

“Well--because you’re sick.”

“We’ve got our reports due in three days, and the whole lab to pack up. Go do that. i don’t need a nursemaid--just a nurse.”

Newton swallows, though its difficult since his throat feels suddenly tight. He bends down and picks up his things, walking out. He finds the nurse Hermann asked for, and keeps walking.

It isn’t Hermann’s fault, obviously. It’s Newton’s own fucked up that’s the problem. His stomach clenches, and he stops, fisted hand against the wall to brace himself.

He swallows again, and returns to the lab.

  
  


“Newton.”

Newton looks up, startled, elbows deep in dismantling a cryotank.

Hermann, who definitely should not be out of bed, is standing there in just a hospital gown and socks, visibly not wearing a binder, and leaning hard on his cane.

Newton blinks at him, “why aren’t you in bed? There’s no way the doctor let you go.”

“I...left.”

Hermann coughs a little, and walks towards him, wobblyly.

Newton itches to steady him, but stays where he is, until Hermann is only a few feet, away. Newton goes and gets a chair, drags it over. Hermann sits in it, slowly.

“You love this work. But you’ve barely done anything for weeks. Less and less as we get closer to the deadline. It’s been driving me mad.”

Newton ducks his head. He knows that. He feels completely miserable about it.

“Why? You are, though I’m usually loathe to admit it, a brilliant scientist. Why have you stopped doing your work?”

Newton stared down at the machine on which he worked.

“I...I didn't try to get six PhDs. I just did the research...I played around because I was bored, and apparently figured out more than most people do in decades. I think they just awarded the degrees so they wouldn't feel so threatened by someone beating them who didn't have fancy letters after their name. Nobody respected me for it.

“I was a freak. A savant, like that means anything other than freak. Lucky freak I guess. But that doesn't mean I can write anything that would get published--I can’t write to save my life, just like I can’t keep anything organised, or get things done... That doesn't mean I can get anyone to respect me. That doesn't mean I can so much as hold down a job.

“This--this war, the Marshal recruiting me, this...partnership. they were the best thing to ever happen to me. It was so urgent, so much new knowledge. I could sink my teeth into it and not look up for days, it was so stimulating. And you...you and everyone listened. You were bitchy and turned up your nose, but you listened to me. And now that's over. And I go back to being nobody.”

Neither of them say anything else for a while. Hermann is the one to finally break the silence.

“You will never be nobody, Newton.”

“Right,” Newton says hollowly.

“Why didn’t you ask me for help?”

Newton snorts at the joke. Then he looks up

“Because… I… I mean…” he stammers, “I didn’t think...I mean, it’s not like _you_ need help.”

“I cannot drive. You take me home every night.”

“That’s just being nice. I’m...more broken than...this...stupid...” he yanks a bundle of wires from the cryotank, which has started smoking. Tears are hot on his burning cheeks.

Arms wrap around him from behind, and squeeze. They squeeze until he lets go of the wires, and keep squeezing. He can hear Hermann wheezing a little, but registers that he sounds much better, as close as they are.

“You are not nothing, Newton Geiszler. You are everything,” Hermann’s voice breaks on the last, “and if anyone in the world ever tells you otherwise, they will answer for it.”


End file.
